Kay Keiichi Sugahara
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KAY KEIICHI SUGAHARA

Kay Sugahara, a millionaire by the age of 29, was sometimes referred to as the “Nisei Onassis” by other second generation Japanese Americans. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, he was held for a time in horse stables at the Santa Anita Racetrack and then sent to Granada (Camp Amache) in Colorado, yet managed to free himself through his recruitment into the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency. After working for the OSS during the war, Sugahara fought to improve relations between the U.S. and Japan, build Asian American communities on a local and national scale, and as Fairfield-Maxwell Ltd. Chairman, he became a millionaire once again by making tankers in Japan for U.S. oil companies. The collection contains Sugahara’s business, trip, and personal files.

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Kay Keiichi Sugahara (Papers) Collection

This collection spans 1915 to 2014 and contains Kay Sugahara’s business, trip, and personal files. The business files document his activities at Fairfield-Maxwell Ltd. (FML), the Dooman Group, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the American Council on Japan, the American Mercantile Company (AMC), the US-Asia Institute (USIA), and associated activities. The trip files document his travels related to FML, USIA, conferences, speeches, ceremonies, christenings, White House inaugurations, and vacation activities. The personal files include scrapbooks, photo albums, correspondence, diaries, appointment books, documentation of Granada, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) reports, biographical manuscripts, awards, audio, audiovisual, and press materials. Preview a small cross section of the digital objects in the collection.

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The Sugahara Collection is available for visitors by request at the UCLA Library Special Collections located in the Young Research Library.

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